🎙️ Podcast Link 🎙️

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

No, not the song by punk rock band The Clash!

When you get your #PhD, one of the common pieces of advice you may hear is that you should move labs, cities, perhaps even countries, for your next position.

In my new #hackingacademia video, I unpack some of the rationale behind this common statement, and walk through a bunch of reasons why, and why not, to move labs and locations after getting your #PhD, ranging from personal circumstances, risk appetite, timing, livability considerations and more!

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Complete topic list and timestamps:

📌 (0:00) The Rule of Thumb of Leaving Your PhD Lab
📌 (0:15) Rules Are Useful… Up to an Extent
📌 (0:32) Reminder About the “Typical” Academic Track
📌 (0:56) The PhD to Postdoc Transition
📌 (1:11) Starting to Unpack The Rule
📌 (1:22) Assumption: You’ve Found a Good Place to Go
📌 (1:34) Bad Reason: It’s The Done Thing
📌 (2:09) Reason: Continuing Your Learning & Development
📌 (3:03) Reason: Growing Your Collaborative Network
📌 (3:39) Reason: Moving Can Overcome Stagnancy
📌 (4:12) Moving to Leave a Toxic Lab
📌 (4:22) Reason: Personal Experience Opportunities
📌 (4:47) Moving Early In Your Career Can Be Easier
📌 (5:18) Reasons to Consider Not Moving
📌 (5:25) Reason: Major Disruption
📌 (6:15) Know Your Change And Risk Aversion Level
📌 (6:48) Career Runway Determines How Much Disruption
📌 (7:19) Social Factors Can Be Challenging
📌 (7:56) Livability Considerations
📌 (8:36) Cultural and Lifestyle Fit is Important
📌 (9:22) Alternative: Long Research Visits to Other Labs
📌 (10:10) Some Moves Don’t Work Out
📌 (10:31) Moving Later Is Still an Option

Full Video Notes

• A Common Wisdom or Rule of Thumb: floating around academia is the concept that once you finish your PhD, you should go elsewhere to another lab, at the very least at another university but often in another city or even another country. Like all rules of thumb, there are reasons for why it exists in the first place, but also reasons why you shouldn’t just take it at face value. This video examines this idea, the key motivations behind it, and some reasons why and why not to follow it.
• A Refresher on a Traditional Academic Path: if you are wanting to stay in academia in the long term, the conventional, but by no means only way of doing so, has been to do a PhD, possibly after a Masters, and then do one or more postdoc positions before getting an entry level faculty job, like a US-based tenure-track assistant professor. 
• The PhD to Postdoc Transition: this has long been one of the most critical transitions early in an academic career, and it’s this transition which is the one that’s most discussed in the context of deliberately leaving your lab. So why is it so discussed, and why is there this informal rule that you should go somewhere else for your postdoc? Let’s examine the reasons, starting with why to move, and why not to move. For the purposes of this video, I’m going to assume you’ve done your due diligence on the lab and it’s a good one and a good fit for you, at least in a broad sense.

Reasons Why To Move

• It’s The Way Things Are Done: this is the most unhelpful reason, but you should be aware of it nonetheless. When people are considering you for jobs, fellowships, grants and so on, there is a cultural hangover that will mean some people, by no means all people, will take a second look at you if you have stayed in the lab you got your PhD at for a long time after getting your PhD. Don’t worry about this reason much, but be aware of it.
• Maximizing Your Learning Opportunity: a typical PhD could last anywhere from 3 – 6 years, primarily in the one lab. If the PhD has gone reasonably smoothly, you will have experienced an incredible learning curve, learning much from your supervisors, but also from the other researchers in the lab. Typically, by the later stages of that experience, that learning curve will have slowed somewhat. Moving to another, different lab is one potential way to re-invigorate that learning curve, by immersing yourself in a new lab, with new labmates, and new supervisors. This is especially true if you’ve become overly comfortable in your PhD lab and are “cruising” – a new lab can shake this up a bit and give you the much needed provocation to keep on developing.
• Growing Your Research Collaborations and Network: assuming you leave your PhD lab on good terms, those connections don’t suddenly disappear when you move to a new lab. You may maintain some collaborations with members of that lab, whilst adding new ones from the lab you join. Part of being a typical successful academic isn’t just about the research you do solely in your lab, but also the collaborative research you do with other labs, and moving labs can be part of the process of growing this network of trusted collaborators.
• Plateauing or Degrading Lab Conditions: even if the environment at your PhD lab is healthy, you can experience some sort of research stagnancy or plateauing from being at the one spot too long. Moving labs can be an effective way to address these issues: but first you need to do some due diligence that the cause isn’t something else, like, for example, a health condition: where moving labs will not help and may make things even worse! And of course if your current lab environment is becoming toxic despite attempts to rectify the situation, moving labs can be a good decision.
• Personal Development and Experience: not every profession transfers locations easily, but academia is one that does. Moving to a new city or country for a postdoc position can be a fantastic way to immerse yourself in a new country, a new culture, and learn a new language. It’s not just the professional side of things: there can be substantial personal pluses to moving labs!
• Moving Early Can Often Be Easier: everyone’s lives develop in different ways, but earlier in your career you are often more mobile than mid-career, especially if you have or plan on having kids. It’s generally easier to re-locate with no kids or with young kids, then with teenage kids, where re-location can be more disruptive. Of course, later in your career you may become more mobile again as your kids become adults and leave home.

Reasons Not To Move

• Disruption: Moving labs, especially if that involves a move to another city or country, introduces a substantial disruption to your research productivity. You’ll need to get your personal life in order in the new location, which is an especially large commitment if you have a partner and kids, and becomes even more substantial if you’re moving away from your normal support network including friends and family. 
• Managing the Disruption: While you can do things to mitigate the disruption, like keeping projects going at your old lab, the disruptive effect will still be significant. In some disciplines, it could set you back a year or two, especially for example if you need to get major experimental facilities up and running at the new lab.
• Knowing Your Change Aversion Level: when weighing up the pros and cons of disruption, it’s important to understand your own level of change and risk aversion. Some people are terrified of change and then pleasantly surprised when it’s not as bad as it seemed: others don’t even think about initiating major changes, and are sometimes unpleasantly surprised by how disruptive they can be. Knowing your own attitude here can help you calibrate your decision as to whether to move.
• Timing Considerations: A key consideration here is how much “runway” you have left in your career and personal circumstances, and consequently the magnitude of disruption that can be tolerated. If you think you only have a year or two left to “make it” in academia before you choose something else, a major disruption may not be a good decision. If you’re in academia for the long haul come rain or shine, then the short term disruption is not as big a factor.
• Social Considerations: if you know people in the location you’re moving to already, then that can ease the disruption. But if you know no-one in a new city, it can take a real deliberate effort to develop new social contacts and groups. For some this is a natural process; for others this is challenging. It can be lonely for some in a new location, especially if most of their friends and family are back where they moved from. Being constantly homesick is not a good recipe for being a productive researcher!
• Livability Considerations: postdocs in many countries are not roles known for paying well, and if the postdoc location you move to has a high cost of living, then your standard of living may fall enough to negatively impact your research productivity. For example, if you’re having to commute long distances because you can’t afford to rent near your lab, that can be detrimental to your professional and personal life. This effect can of course work in the opposite way as well – you might snag a relatively well paying postdoc in a relatively low cost of living location!
• Fit Considerations: different cities and countries are experienced differently by different people – just ask your friends and family what they thought of various cities and see the varied reactions. If you can’t stand the day to day living of the place you’ve moved to, you’re not going to have a good postdoc experience. One example that many people I know have gone through in this regard is moving from a location where cars are relatively rare and most transport is done by foot, bike or public transport. It can be a major shock to move to some locations like in the US, where cars really aren’t optional and can dominate your transport options. For some this is a non-issue: for others, adjusting can be hard.

Wrapping Up

• Alternatives: With the right support, you can still get a lot of the experience associated with leaving your PhD lab, even if you don’t actually leave your PhD lab permanently. One option are longer stay research trips, often called sabbaticals, where you spend a period of time ranging from a few months to a year or more in another lab, but as a visiting researcher. Your salary is still usually paid by your host organization, but you get much of the experience of living and working somewhere else, knowing that you’ll be returning back home at the end. And then there are schemes where you can get a visiting fellowship or scholarship that helps fund that trip.

Not Forever: Moving labs is not an irreversible decision, just a potentially disruptive one with potential big upsides. If you, despite doing your due diligence and plenty of preparation, find the experience of being in the new lab horrible, for whatever reason, you can always leave. Likewise, if you stay put after your PhD, you can move later in your career as well.